Research Interests:

Our areas of research are structural, functional and comparative genomics of plant and plant pathogens. Using various genomics tools we are mapping, cloning and functionally validating disease resistance genes in plants with special reference to rice. For the first time, we have cloned rice blast resistance gene Pi-kh. We are also working on development of DNA markers like SSR, STMS and SNP markers closely linked to various disease resistance genes in rice and fingerprinting of various plants and plant pathogens with DNA markers. Besides, we are also doing allele mining for specific disease resistance genes from wild species and land races of rice. In comparative genomics, our major efforts are on developing new marker systems with the help of genome/EST sequence data and bioinformatics tools and performing synteny and microsynteny analysis among different plant species.

Selected Publications:

1. Sharma, T. R., Madhav, M.S., Singh, B. K., Shanker, P., Jana, T. K., Dalal, V., Pandit, A., Singh, A., Gaikwad, K., Upreti, H C. and Singh, N.K. (2005). High-resolution mapping, cloning and molecular characterization of the gene of rice, which confers resistance to rice blast. Mol Genet. Genomics . 274:569-578

2. Sharma, T. R. , Shanker, P., Singh, B. K., Jana, T. K., Madhav, M. S., Gaikwad, K., Singh, N. K., Plaha, P., . Rathour, R. (2005). Molecular mapping of rice blast resistance gene Pik h in the rice variety Tetep. J Plant Biochem. Biotech: 14-127-133.

3. International Rice Genome Sequencing Project. (2005). The map-based sequence of the rice genome. Nature 436 , 793-800.

4. The Rice chromosome 11 and 12 sequencing consortium. (2005). The sequence of rice chromosome 11 and 12, rich in disease resistance genes and recent gene duplications. BMC Biology. 3: 20.

5. Jana, T K., Singh, N K., Koundal, K. R. and Sharma, T. R. (2005). Genetic differentiation of charcoal rot pathogen macrophomina phaseolina in specific groups by using URP-PCR. Canadian J Microbiol . 51 : 159 -164.

6. Singh, N.K., Raghuvanshi, S. ........Sharma, T. R., A. K. Tyagi . (2004) Sequence analysis of the long arm of rice chromosome 11 for rice-wheat synteny. Funct. & Integ. Genomics 4: 102 : 117.

7. Sharma, T. R. , Chauhan, R. S., Singh, B. M., Paul, R., Sagar, V. and Rathour, R. (2002). RAPD and pathotype analyses of Magnaporthe grisea population from North-Western Himalayan Region of India. J. Phytopathology (Germany) : 150: 649 –656.

8. Prachi, Sharma, T. R. and Singh, B. M. (2002). Salicylic acid induced insensitivity to culture filtrate of Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. zingiberi in the calli of Zingiber officinale Rosce. European Journal of Plant Pathology 108 :31-39.

9. Sharma, T. R. and Singh, B. M. (1997) High frequency micropropagation of disease-free Zingiber offficinale . Plant Cell Rep .17: 68-72.

10. Sharma, T. R. and Tewari, J. P.(1996) Flow cytometric analysis of Brassiaca juncea cell and pollen culture treated with destruxin B, a toxin produced by Alternaria brassicae . Physiol. Mol. Plant Pathol . 48: 379-387.